A Doh! Sunset

Just forty-five minutes before sunset the cloud layer lifts and there is the bridge with a light blue and pink sky behind it. This is the sunset that will align perfectly with the bridge, lo and behold this might actually happen!

Slowly the golden streaks of sunlight intensify the overcast holds high above the Bay, even with my meager little camera this could be the event I have been blathering about for weeks. 

Yes! A solar appearance and with this angle of decline the sun will appear to be setting right smack in the middle of the bridge, it will actually be cradled between the two towers. Tolkienian prose leaps to mind.

Wait! What is that large dark bank of clouds. Quick check the weather website. Weekend storm moving in -- marine layer 35 miles off shore. Quick mathematical calculation: marine layer 35 miles away, sun 92,875,414 miles away. Hmm, that is going to cause a juxtapositional problem.

Damn! Foiled again by water vapor.

If the Sun Sets in the Darkness . . .

This is the view from my window this morning, which provides you with all the information you need about the moonset early this morning. Unfortunately the weather predictors are not encouraging about our chances for more celestial dazzlement this week. The much anticipated full moon settling over San Francisco will occur this Friday and Saturday, which as you can see below is not apparently going to be prime viewer weather.

TODAY	TOMORROW	THU	FRI	SAT	6-10 DAY
Partly Cloudy	Sunny	Partly Cloudy	Few Showers	Showers	Extended Forecast
High: 73° Low: 51°	High: 69° Low: 50°	High: 62° Low: 51°	High: 64° Low: 51°	High: 65° Low: 52°

The first sunset through the Golden Gate narrows happened yesterday, you will not notice in my shot below any sort of bridge or the golden opening to the Pacific. A near fifty mile long fog bank crept in during the late afternoon yesterday to fill San Francisco Bay from end to end.

I would mention one final time that I really am fond of this type of weather. The rain and fog are fascinating for me, my spirits are lifting by the damp and chilled weather, it's like be wrapped in a cocoon the size of the universe. Sounds are muffled, perceptions shrink and we are forced to go on internal sensors. Perhaps in the next few days we will get a glimpse of the astronomical workings between the clouds, if not, I shall attempt to entertain and minister from the internal microcosm.

Pinprick holes in a colourless sky

Let insipid figures of light pass by

The mighty light of ten thousand suns

Challenges infinity and is soon gone

Night time, to some a brief interlude

To others the fear of solitude

Brave Helios, wake up your steeds

Bring the warmth the countryside needs

Moody Blues The Day Begins

from Days of Future Passed

Out My Window

Images from week one in the new apartment. Again I promise from this point on, only utterly spectacular shots or anything a visiting telephoto lens might capture.

The daylight shots really don't do the reality justice. The view of San Francisco is overwhelmingly distracting.

You can click on any of these for a truly spectacular view.
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photo credits: me

Cities of Contradictions

I like the San Francisco Bay Area a lot. Here is similar to many of the places I enjoy or have enjoyed or could enjoy living; they have a consistent theme. San Francisco, Ann Arbor, Cambridge, Austin, Madison -- the connection is, of course, a liberal political environment. The San Francisco Bay Area might well be the hub of all such places in the USA. Ann Arbor is certainly more liberal as an entity but SF and Cambridge etc. share their space with a larger metropolitan area and that necessarily means a lot more purple shading and not a pure blue political mapscape.

For some reason the contradictions of this place seem more acute. Mind you, I am not just living in the liberal environs of the Bay Area, I am now a resident of the People's Republic of Berkeley. Yet even here the political contradictions abound. In fact, the insular nature of left-wing, eco-fascist, world-beat, recycle your disposal diaper land begins to look frighteningly like a right wing communist pluralistic oligarchy, if you don't share the current politically correct flavor of the month. I mean if you don't intend to vote against war, you had better not try to run for Berkeley City Council. I mean the last big war here was devastating here, the potholes still pockmark most city streets.

But as I said, I like it here. More often than not toleration is the theme of the debate. I wonder how it feels to be a liberal in Montana or Idaho? What is the most liberal place in the north central US? And which university calls that city home?

Pictures: To answer the question posed by a reader the other day. "What comes first the picture or the text?" Well, most of the time I try to conform the pictures on my blog to the topic I have already written on. And I do have a stash of photos I really want to use some day. Today, however, the picture came first and inspired me with contradictions of politics and place. Oh and yes, for you east coasters, mid-westers, southies and others, that is the Golden Gate Bridge.

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photo credit: friendsofirony.com

A Room With a View

There are some visuals that just can't be captured with a still camera. The Grand Canyon comes to mind, the Taj Mahal, any ocean at any time and the view from the windows in my new apartment. The shot above was the closest I could find but it is only a fractional glimpse of what I get to see every day.

Let me just swivel you through my daily view. If I lift my head up from this computer and look straight out of the six foot windows that cover the entire west facing side of the living room, I see centered in my view - the Golden Gate Bridge.

The photo above was taken from the Berkeley hills, that cluster of buildings in the foreground is the UCB campus. The hills are about six miles from the edge of the SF Bay, the apartment is nestled in a tree filled neighborhood less than two miles from the water. Nestled is really not the best descriptor since I am on the eighth floor facing due west with all the building between me and the water less than four stories. I have an unobstructed panoramic view.

The Golden Gate Bridge is another nine miles over the Bay, you can see the two towers in the picture above but, of course, it ain't the same. If I look just a fractional head turn to the south, I see the east section of the Bay Bridge running out to Treasure Island and then the west struts that jog back south to San Francisco. The downtown sky scrapers poke above the island in the foreground, I have a direct view of Russian Hill and the north side neighborhoods of SF out to the Presidio and south approach to the Golden Gate.

To the north, I can see Sausalito, Tiburon and much of the North Bay beyond the Richmond Bridge. The view south would be blocked by the end of the living room but no... that is where the sun room begins with another wall of windows. On the east side of the Bay I can see as far south as downtown Oakland and then with the sea level South Bay taking over, I have a clear view of the mountains that snake down the pennisula and wrap around San Jose and the Silicon Valley.

All of this in the lower third of my view with massive sky above. I have already seen storms crash in through the narrows of the Golden Gate; fog creep up and over the hills and envelope San Francisco; and well, the sunsets will be massive distractions. I promise not to turn the blog into a exercise in solar imagery.

The real question will be whether I have to turn my desk around and face away from all of this visual glory, there is work to be done. But occasionally I will offer you glimpses of my daily visual tableau.

By the way, if you come to visit and you have a good camera with a long range lens, please pack it. I will offer some long range shots from my mini-digital but it was acquired to get headshots of poker players in card rooms and not for vistas like what I am going to enjoy right now!

First night rainy sunset over the Golden Gate.